NP but Cortazar. Hopscotch and the anti-binary--re the law of the excluded middle

[Thomas Eckhardt]

"Hopscotch", ah...

This author puts it very well:

http://quarterlyconversation.com/hopscotch-by-julio-cortazar-review

The Wiki entry is also good.

A few additional associative and stenographic remarks based on quickly 
thumbing through my old German edition (I once tried to read it in 
Spanish but found that it was way too difficult):

Links to Pynchon's novels are obvious. Not necessarily direct influence 
at the time (1963) but definitely shared sensibilities.

Jazz, randomness, non-linearity, an all-pervading sense, very well 
articulated by the characters, that rationalism is not enough, but most 
of all a rage against convention, linguistically and otherwise. One of 
my personal favorites is a passage (which I cannot find right now) about 
how the world is given to us pre-fabricated, reminding me of Hugo von 
Hoffmannthals "Letter to Lord Chandos". Hence the despair of the 
protagonist and the formal and linguistic experiments of the author.

As a predecessor for some of the experiments: Tristram Shandy.

Chapter 28, which I found difficult to understand, even disturbing, at 
the time, is the centre of the first part of the book which comprises 56 
chapters as I just now realized. It is not hard to see why.

Even more than with Pynchon, the innovations and the conceptual stuff is 
all fine and dandy (with Pynchon this pertains also to the unusual 
subjects of some of his novels) but wouldn't be worth a lot if the prose 
wasn't up to the task. It more than is.

The second epigraph takes its cue from the beginning of "Moby-Dick", I 
just now realized.

Wiki sez that Cortázar was an admirer of Jules Verne for all of his 
life. Just like Doc in "Back to the Future"... Invention!

All in all, indispensable reading for admirers of Pynchon.

After "Hopscotch", I recommend "Libro de Manuel" (much more political) 
and "El Perseguidor" (inspired by the life of Charlie Parker). That is, 
of course, only if you have already read the short stories...
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l